clean

The principle of progression says that fitness and sports need to be viewed as a series of steps, each of which builds on what came before. The idea here is that by following this principle, you have athletes with a solid base in terms of skills, athleticism, and fitness. Failing to follow this principle results in some serious gaps in fitness and skills and limits athletic development because of those gaps. It may also contribute to injuries due to weaknesses...

In our last three posts ((http://www.cissik.com/blog/2017/01/power-development-part-i-foundations/ , http://www.cissik.com/blog/2017/02/power-development-part-ii-cautions/ , and http://www.cissik.com/blog/?p=1723&preview=true ) we covered background information behind training for power, cautions with it, and principles behind program design. With this post we’ll cover some of the tools and strategies that are used in power training. The following is a list of tools and strategies used in power training. It’s not a comprehensive list, but it does cover the major ones: Olympic lifts Plyometrics Jump squats Bench throws Power lifting...

Power, the ability to generate force quickly, is important to every sport. As a result, it’s something that coaches focus on with the training of their athletes. The approaches to the training of power are pretty broad, from using slow strength training all the way to performing plyometrics and everything in-between. Regardless of the approach used, the vertical jump is one of the most frequently used tests to evaluate an athlete’s power. Teo et al, in the Journal of...

Periodically I post on social media about the value of the big five movements in a strength and conditioning program. These five movements are the press, pull, row, squat, and Olympic lift. The gist of my posts is that you can’t go wrong if you base your athletic strength and conditioning programs around those five movements. Now, when I post this I invariably get comments from people who are concerned about the lack of variety. Or the lack of...

Legendary throws coach Don Babbitt has an excellent article on strength training and the men’s throws in track and field. In this article, Coach Babbitt is drawing on more than 30 years of experience coaching at the University of Georgia including Olympians, world champions, and NCAA champions. Coach Babbitt takes an interesting approach to the importance of strength training to the throws. He looks at each of four lifts; the bench press, the squat, the clean, and power snatch. He...